How Mimetic Are You?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Armstrong & Getty On Demand — "How Mimetic Are You?"

Release Date: May 22, 2025
Host: iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction to Mimetic Desire

In the "How Mimetic Are You?" episode of Armstrong & Getty On Demand, hosts Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty delve into the intricate concept of mimetic desire, exploring how human desires are often unconsciously influenced by the desires of others. This episode offers a thought-provoking discussion on the nature of desire, social conformity, and the psychological mechanisms that drive our choices.

Defining Mimetic Desire

The conversation kicks off with Joe Getty introducing the topic:

Joe Getty [01:05]: "How mimetic are you? It's one more thing."

The hosts wrestle with the pronunciation and meaning of "mimetic," setting the stage for a deep dive into how our desires are shaped not just by personal preference but by the influences around us.

Social Influence and Desire Formation

Joe Getty elaborates on how individuals, particularly those who are less physically assertive, rely on consensus and group alignment for safety and acceptance:

Joe Getty [01:36]: "People who can't defend themselves physically need more consensus because they need more desperately to be part of a group to protect themselves."

This leads to a discussion on peer pressure and the formation of alliances, especially among young women who prioritize group belonging as an adaptive mechanism.

The Illusion of Autonomous Desires

The hosts reference René Girard's theory of the "romantic lie," which posits that people often believe their desires are independent when, in reality, they are influenced by external models:

Joe Getty [06:00]: "This assumption that my desires are all my own, this story that I tell myself is what René Girard called the romantic lie."

Jack Armstrong questions whether recognizing this mimetic nature is detrimental or simply an aspect of human nature:

Jack Armstrong [06:43]: "Is somebody suggesting that this is bad, though, that we should fight against this? Or is this okay?"

The consensus leans towards understanding and awareness rather than fighting against these ingrained behaviors.

Practical Examples of Mimetic Desire

Joe Getty provides relatable examples to illustrate mimetic desire:

• Running a Marathon: The sudden, collective desire to undertake strenuous activities like marathons in mid-life stages.

• Purchasing Trends: Deciding to buy a dog during COVID because it seemed timely, despite being the only one in the friend group to do so.

• Fashion Choices: Picking a popular color shirt not based on personal preference but because it's trendy.

Jack Armstrong [05:52]: "I decide that I want to wear this color shirt has nothing to do with the fact that it has become popular, right?"

These examples highlight how desires are often externally motivated, reflecting societal trends rather than individual needs.

The Endless Cycle of Desire

The discussion progresses to the concept that desire is never truly satiated. Once one desire is fulfilled, another immediately takes its place:

Joe Getty [13:09]: "Desire always needs something to latch onto. It can't stay free floating in this sense. It operates like a bicuspid that has to be attached to a substrate."

This perpetual cycle prevents long-term satisfaction, as individuals continuously seek new desires influenced by ever-evolving models.

Personal Reflections and Real-Life Implications

Both hosts share personal anecdotes to illustrate their points. Jack Armstrong talks about his son's relentless pursuit of happiness through material possessions, while Joe Getty reflects on his own struggles with real estate desires:

Joe Getty [13:21]: "I went on Zillow and Redfin and all of those real estate websites all the time... if I moved there, I would still be doing this."

These stories underscore the ubiquity of mimetic desire in everyday life and its impact on personal fulfillment.

Julius Caesar and the "Romantic Lie"

A brief mention of Julius Caesar serves as a historical anchor to René Girard's theories:

Joe Getty [10:44]: "It's the I came, I saw, I conquered thing. He was just deluding himself."

This reference emphasizes how even historical figures were not immune to mimetic influences, reinforcing the universality of the concept.

Conclusion: Embracing Awareness

The episode concludes with an acknowledgment that while mimetic desire is an inherent part of human nature, awareness and understanding can lead to more informed and conscious decision-making. The hosts encourage listeners to recognize the external influences on their desires and strive for greater self-awareness to achieve genuine satisfaction.

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Notable Quotes

• Joe Getty [01:36]: "People who can't defend themselves physically need more consensus because they need more desperately to be part of a group to protect themselves."

• Joe Getty [06:00]: "This assumption that my desires are all my own, this story that I tell myself is what René Girard called the romantic lie."

• Joe Getty [13:09]: "Desire always needs something to latch onto. It can't stay free floating in this sense. It operates like a bicuspid that has to be attached to a substrate."

• Joe Getty [10:44]: "It's the I came, I saw, I conquered thing. He was just deluding himself."

Key Takeaways

• Mimetic Desire: Our desires are often influenced by the desires of others, leading to conformity and social alignment.

• Romantic Lie: The belief that our desires are entirely autonomous is a pervasive misconception.

• Perpetual Seeking: Desire is an endless cycle; fulfilling one desire leads to the birth of another.

• Awareness is Crucial: Understanding the origins of our desires can lead to more conscious and fulfilling choices.

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This episode of Armstrong & Getty On Demand offers listeners a deep exploration into the psychology of desire, encouraging introspection and mindfulness in an age dominated by social influence and constant change.

Transcript

[Jack Armstrong]

You're listening to an iHeart podcast.

[Joe Getty]

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[Michael]

How memetic are you? It's one more thing.

[Jack Armstrong]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Michael]

One more thing. What was that word? Mimetic.

[Jack Armstrong]

M Medic.

[Guest Speaker]

Mimetic.

[Michael]

Mimetic. Mimetic with an I. Mimet. Medic. I'm very frustrated with myself because, you know that quote I'm always throwing around about how I'm still looking for it as I speak?

[Jack Armstrong]

Again, do you think you're better than me? Yeah, that quote.

[Guest Speaker]

You guys are children.

[Michael]

No, that's your quote. So the quote had to do with how women, in large part and low tester, low testosterone males filter information not through. Is this true? But more. Is agreeing with this going to make me safer? In other words, people who can't defend themselves physically need more consensus because they need more desperately to be part of a group to protect themselves physically. It's an adaptive mechanism. So that is one of the reasons why young women in particular, it's such a priority for them to form alliances and to be seen as part of the group. And you see that in peer pressure. You see that in universities screaming and screeching slogans that don't make any sense whatsoever. But it's. And I can't remember the specific term for it, but again, it's not like rugged individual appraisal of truth. It's like, if I go along with this, will that make my life better?

[Jack Armstrong]

Anyway, okay, you're talking about like, generally, like if I'm in a, like standing around with a group of people, somebody could say something completely stupid, whack job. I know is not true. I hate politically, but I'm not gonna say anything. I don't think it's because I got low T. I just don't want to argue with him in that setting. But it doesn't change my beliefs any. You mean like you actually like, go along with it?

[Michael]

Yes. Or at least you pretend to much more actively than you're talking about. And, and if you're younger and more impressionable, and this is what we're going to get into with mimetic thinking, it, it tends to kind of seep into you and it becomes what you believe. I thought it was interesting on this topic. I was reading Holman Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal. He's talking about the whole Jake Tapper book and Joe Biden's senility and all that stuff. And he, he mentions all, all through this period, the Times, New York Times Thomas Edsell wrote countless 3,000 word pieces citing academics on Mr. Trump' Hitler ism. His constant subject was voter attitudes. Yet not once did the ancient and esteemed Mr. Edsell acknowledge that the three year long Russia fraud even happened or had any role in causing 152 million Americans in 2020 and 2024 to repudiate the establishment in favor of Mr. Trump. And no, this isn't strange. Humans are intensely social animals. Our psychology and behaviors are rooted in evolved obsession with status, that is our standing with others. According to Population Reference Bureau, 117 billion humans have existed since our species emerged 200,000 years ago. How many of these humans ever used their brains for any purpose other than servicing their need to be in accord with those around them? Yet had journalists been honest in the expected journalistic way, acknowledging what was in front of their faces, the past 10 years would have been completely different. So anyway, he's talking about the fact that we just, we want to be esteemed by our peers. We want to be raised up in the tribe, and so we go along to get along, as they say. And one of our brilliant observant listeners sent along this, this essay by a fellow by the name of Luke Burgess. What is mimetic desire? And it's. He says, nearly everyone unconsciously assumes there's a straight line between them and the things they want. I wake up one day and suddenly realize that I want to run a marathon. Amazingly, all my friends had a similar realization when they hit their mid-30s too. Or I get the brilliant idea that Substack is objectively the best publishing platform for my long form essay writing. Based on all the data right around the time that everyone else and their mother seems to be arriving at the same conclusion. And he says, I decided to get a dog during COVID because, well, I've been wanting a dog for a long time and now seems like as good a time as ever. Never mind that I'm the only one in my friend group who hasn't. And these guys share pictures of their puppies on Instagram along with the rest of the world on a nearly daily basis. In each of these cases, I've convinced myself that my desire is independent and autonomous. I want to pursue things just because it makes sense or it's the right thing to do, or it's what I authentically want or need to be happy.

[Jack Armstrong]

I decide that I want to wear this color shirt has nothing to do with the fact that it has become popular, right?

[Michael]

Yeah. I just like the color. This all happens beneath my conscious awareness. Very few people question why they want the things they want at all. This assumption that my desires are all my own, this story that I tell myself is what the French social scientist Rene Girard called the romantic lie. The lie is that I want things independently or that I choose all of the objects of my desire out of some kind of secret desire chamber in my heart. That I know a good thing when I see it, that I know what's desirable and what's not, unaided. Then he goes into the example of Julius Caesar. He was an excellent romantic liar. So this is a. This is a distraction? No, the Julius Caesar example, specifically.

[Guest Speaker]

Right, yeah.

[Jack Armstrong]

Is somebody suggesting that this is bad, though, that we should fight against this? Or is this okay? This is just pointing out it does part of human nature.

[Michael]

I think what they're pointing out is you'd be better off if you better understood what's going on in your own head.

[Guest Speaker]

Oh, that's scary because I don't know.

[Jack Armstrong]

If I want to wear unpopular clothes, get dogs at the wrong time. You know, have a haircut that nobody else likes or whatever.

[Guest Speaker]

Start reading. Substack.

[Michael]

Yeah. All right. Have an iguana instead of a dog. Yeah.

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[Michael]

The truth between us and the things we want is never straight. It's always curved. It goes through or around models. Here's one called mediated desire. Models are people groups, are things that help us know what we want. And then he quotes Hermione Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is one of Shakespeare's more entertaining plays. Oh, hell to choose love by another's eyes. The plot being that this one guy decided everybody was hot for this chick, so he was too. That's. That is a horrible summary. Please don't write an angry email. I just want to keep moving.

[Jack Armstrong]

That does happen. I remember that from high school, which I didn't realize at the time. That was a weird thing that happened a few times, that happened a couple times, and the reverse also. And then with a distance of hindsight, it was like, how did she be him become. I mean not. Not to sound crueler, but she wasn't that great. I mean, why was everybody thinking she was the person and then that other person super attractive?

[Michael]

Why was nobody interested in her and sweet and kind and the rest of it? But yeah, you kind of didn't notice till your buddy was hot for her. Anyway, he says it's held to know we've chosen anything by another's eyes, but we do it all the time. We choose brands, schools and dishes at a restaurant. Buy them. Humans have a built in instinctual radar for most of our basic needs, like animals do. If we're trapped outside in the cold, freezing, nobody needs to tell us to seek warmth. Basic survival, sustenance.

[Jack Armstrong]

Not true. Animals need radio, weather, people and TV radio. Stay in the shade today.

[Michael]

It's hot. Yeah, exactly. Basic survival, sustenance, sex, warmth. These are all instinctual needs for which we have biological mechanisms to guide us. If I'm starving and see a juicy steak and a piece of wood in front of me, I don't need much help to determine which one I should eat. My body tells me what to choose. But these things are not desires per se. It's more appropriate to call them needs. A desire, on the other hand, is an object that we pursue for which there's no purely instinctual basis.

[Jack Armstrong]

This. I don't want to think about this too much so. Because then you start getting into. So I'm not the unique human being I think I am. I bought this car, these shoes, watching this show Live in this. All because of some sort of wanting to fit in.

[Guest Speaker]

Fit it.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, I don't want to think about that.

[Michael]

Maybe it's the benefit of the fact that this is the second time I've approached this. Maybe because I've gotten past your animal, like, reaction to this wisdom. Oh, by the way, if you'd like to sign up for my how to be condescending workshops, we've got openings next Tuesday. No. So I've had a chance to noodle this through a little bit, and this is a very long essay. I don't think it's paywalled. We'll post it under May 22's hot [e-mail] I'll get to you guys in a few minutes. But in digesting this, and I tell you what, do I read one more part? No, I'll just get to the punchline.

[Jack Armstrong]

Maybe if you hadn't skipped the Caesar part, I would understand it.

[Michael]

It's the I came, I saw, I conquered thing. He. But he, he was just. He was deluding himself.

[Jack Armstrong]

Gotcha.

[Michael]

Anyway, I think what it boils down to is we're made over. You know, even before Homo sapiens were in control, we had, you know, predecessors. So we've been around for a long damn time as an animal, we. To say, huh, they may have a point. Or wait a minute, we're all a tribe here, and, and my friends who protect me and love me or whatever, and we eat together. They think this thing, I need to take it seriously.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, yeah, I don't think that's a.

[Michael]

Flaw or demeaning at all, really.

[Jack Armstrong]

A lot of what is evolutionary is pretty easily explained. It just. I don't, I don't like the think about it because I would like to think I'm more, you know, not just doing that, but. Yeah, it makes sense. You look at that family over there. They're surviving. I should probably pay attention to what they're doing because they're surviving.

[Michael]

Yeah, it gets interesting when it extends to things that are completely abstract, like what color pants or how high your jeans should rise. Of course, some of that's just social acceptance.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, I think it all fits together or.

[Michael]

Oh, sure, yeah.

[Jack Armstrong]

Is the wood in the house dark now? I thought it was light. No, it's back to dark now. Okay, so it's going to become light again in like 15 years. Yes. Okay.

[Michael]

Yeah. And then he gets into the concept of desire. Desire always needs something to latch onto. It can't stay free floating in this sense. It operates like A bicuspid that has to be attached to a substrate, a rock or some other surface that's like a clam or a muscle or whatever. As soon as it becomes detached from one thing, it immediately attaches itself to something else. Another model. There is no end to desire because there are always more models. The overnight bitcoin millionaire doesn't start wanting less or even simpler things. He starts taking an interest in rare fish aquariums, Nordic cooking, and traveling to obscure places he reads about in his monocle magazines. I don't know what that is. Desire, according to Rene Girard, is always for something we think we lack or else it wouldn't be desired at all. Desire is not object oriented as we commonly assume. Desire needs to find fulfillment in. Never finds fulfillment in any particular thing. It just goes from one thing to another to another to another.

[Jack Armstrong]

That has certainly been my experience and something I've talked to my specifically my youngest son about always, always, always wanting something that is going to make him happy. And obviously it never works.

[Michael]

Yeah, I was visiting my parents church years and years and years ago and I wish I had gotten or kept a written copy of the sermon. They ended up leaving the church because the guy was the minister, was a bit of an egotistical dick, or at least so they said. And my parents would never be harsh about that sort of thing unless it was true. But the guy was a hell of a good speaker and his sermon was about lust and not sexual lust, although he touched on that. But he was talking about how exactly what this is about, how your desire will move from one thing to another to another if you let it run wild and you're not aware of what it's doing. It's like I've become acutely aware that I like to look at real estate porn, as I've called it through the years. I just, I'm really interested in real estate in general as a market. But I will look at like really nice houses for sale four weeks after I bought a house and I've realized it's a lust. Like it gives me a shot of endorphins and wow, it would be cool to own that house or to live there or whatever. And now I've intellectualized, intellectualized it because I, I try to be aware of this stuff. Why am I emotionally attracted to this? Why do I want that? Why am I going along with that? And I've realized the minute you buy that house, you'll be doing this again. Hot to trot for another one. It's a desire that always Wants to latch onto something new.

[Guest Speaker]

I. I laughed in agreement because I've was thinking about that. I go on Zillow and Redfin and all of those real estate websites all the time, just looking. Yeah. And I. I'm not on the market. I just moved. You know, I'm. I. And I love my home, but I have so much fun looking at these homes and going, oh my God, if I could. If, you know, if I could live there, that would be pretty cool. But you're right, if I moved there, I would still be doing this.

[Michael]

Yeah. And so the point of the sermon was that recognize lust in all of its forms. You know, you move from. For dudes, woman to woman to woman. Straight dudes. Do you have to say that these days? I guess anyway, because he keeps lusting for something new and different, and you're never going to satisfy it. You're just going to keep doing it. And you ought to be aware of that and be more disciplined as a Christian or, you know, just whatever sort of person you want to be. Giggity, giggety, giggety, giggety. All right. Do you want to hear the Caesar stuff?

[Jack Armstrong]

No, I don't.

[Michael]

Good. I don't want to tell you. I think we rolled enough tape.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, like that was asking if we wanted homework.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, that's funny.

[Michael]

You know, Joe, I also lust for real estate. I find myself, I will squat in one house and then I get see the other house and I go squat over there. I think, why am I squatting in this dump? I'd be happy if I was squatting over there.

[Jack Armstrong]

Then you get there, you squat, and what happens? Well, I guess that's it. That was a good ending. Michael, you're a treasure.

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[Jack Armstrong]

You're listening to an iHeart podcast.